This picture of a balsa wood mock-up reminded me about some of aspects that influence brand image. What you can see on the left is a picture from the Design Hall of the Canon Camera Museum where the company describes the design process for new cameras.

Now, most people don’t care about Canon’s camera design process, but some customers do - the passionate customers. These passionate customers are the ones that go around and tell everyone about the latest products they bought. They are the enthusiasts that are counting the days until a new product is released. They are the ones that want to know that Canon is using balsa wood mock-ups to ensure that their cameras have a good grip.

The information that Canon published about the Camera Design Process, is the information that passionate users "need" to feed their information lust. (see Trendwatching.com’s trendreport on "INFOLUST"). Feeding your customers’ infolust (maybe one can even design services that feed this infolust) is an essential building block to deliver extra value that customers get when they "engage" with your products and brand.

While clicking through the short articles and images that describe Canon’s design process I was wondering if the brand image that I have about Canon has changed as well. Although I am not a Canon customer, I think that my Canon brand image and the relationship with the company changes if I understand how a product has come to life. I wonder what impact the pictures of the balsa wood mock-ups have on me next time I am holding a Canon camera in my hands. I guess it will be positive, cause I can tell others how the camera came to life (balsa wood, clay and plastic mock-ups).

What does that mean for your business? I am convinced that most companies have a story to tell - the story of a product’s genesis. Instead of spending money to make your brand more "authentic", why don’t you launch a website that tells your customers how your product or service comes to life? What are the stages between the initial idea and the final product? Summarize them, make them available, invite your customers and give them a story they can tell. The Canon Camera Museum is a great case study for that.

As a Sidenote: If you are a product designer or plan to build a product prototype make sure to check out Canon’s Balsa Wood Mock-Up Modeling Tutorial.

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This is a picture of a prototyping set-up for an innovative mobile device that a team of students from the University of St. Gallen and the University of Stanford have built in the course "E310: Global Team-Based Design Innovation”.

I really like this approach to prototyping and the students have done a great job, yet my experience is that if you show prototypes like this around, designer (in this case students) will be confronted with two different kinds of feedback. One response is “I don’t know what this should be and if you try to build it like that it will never work.” Another response is “Yes, I get it. Maybe you can try this and integrate it like that”. It is sometimes difficult to understand how one single design can induce such different reactions but to understand it, one has to look at the different outcomes in an innovation process.

Initially there is an idea, which has to be evaluated and might then be transferred into a concept. This concept itself is evaluated and then transferred into a state that is ready for production. This results in two different kinds of prototypes: one that is the “proof of idea” (showing that your idea actually works and is helpful) and the other one which is a “proof of concept” (that your idea fits into an overall concept).

The reason for the different answers is that for one group prototyping works as a “proof of ideas” while the other group looks at the prototype and interprets it as a “proof of concept” that is ready for production - ready to make money from.

These different perspectives are both valid, yet it is important to communicate what kind of prototype you are showing and what kind of answers you expect. It is no problem when people see a “proof of concept” and think it is a “proof of idea”. The problem is if you show a “proof of idea” and people think it is a “proof of concept” that is ready for manufacturing. Then their feedback will focus on reasons why it is not ready for production (when you actually haven’t even tried to present something that is ready for production).

Is this only relevant for designers creating tangible prototypes? No, it applies to everyone who is working with different ideas to create a concept no matter if it’s a graphic designer, web designer or industrial designer.

The essential point is to present different ideas and explain how they shape the overall concept but one has to clearly distinguish and communicate if it is an “idea prototype” or a “concept prototype”.

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